might have pulled a string through cheese. I’d beheaded chickens with
Dad, clutching their scabby legs while he raised the ax and brought it
down with a loud thwack, then tightening my grip, holding on with all
I had, when the chicken convulsed with death, scattering feathers and
spattering my jeans with blood. Remembering the chickens, I
wondered at the plausibility of Caravaggio’s scene: no one had that
look on their face—that tranquil, disinterested expression—when
taking off something’s head.
I knew the painting was by Caravaggio but I remembered only the
surname and even that I couldn’t spell. I was certain the title was
Judith Beheading Someone but could not have produced Holofernes
even if it had been my neck behind the blade.
Thirty seconds left. Perhaps I could score a few points if I could just
get something—anything—on the page, so I sounded out the name
phonetically: “Carevajio.” That didn’t look right. One of the letters was
doubled up, I remembered, so I scratched that out and wrote
“Carrevagio.” Wrong again. I auditioned different spellings, each worse
than the last. Twenty seconds.
Next to me, Vanessa was scribbling steadily. Of course she was. She
belonged here. Her handwriting was neat, and I could read what she’d
written: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. And next to it, in equally
pristine print, Judith Beheading Holofernes. Ten seconds. I copied the
text, not including Caravaggio’s full name because, in a selective
display of integrity, I decided that would be cheating. The projector
flashed to the next slide.
I glanced at Vanessa’s paper a few more times during the exam but it
was hopeless. I couldn’t copy her essays, and I lacked the factual and
stylistic know-how to compose my own. In the absence of skill or
knowledge, I must have scribbled down whatever occurred to me. I
don’t recall whether we were asked to evaluate Judith Beheading
Holofernes, but if we were I’m sure I would have given my
impressions: that the calm on the girl’s face didn’t sit well with my
experience slaughtering chickens. Dressed in the right language this
might have made a fantastic answer—something about the woman’s
serenity standing in powerful counterpoint to the general realism of
the piece. But I doubt the professor was much impressed by my
observation that, “When you chop a chicken’s head off, you shouldn’t
smile because you might get blood and feathers in your mouth.”